19/04/2010

The History of Aviation has won the top prize, the NexT Trophy, at the 2010 NexT International Film Festival (April 13-18), Romania's top short and medium-length film competition. Hungarian director Balint Kenyeres' excellent movie about a girl who goes missing during an upper-middle class party at the seaside at the beginning of the last century was warmly received by both the festival's jury and audiences.

Best Director also went to Hungary, to Laszlo Nemes' With a Little Patience. Shot in a single take, the film shows 13 simultaneously very common and very shocking minutes in the life of a secretary.

Spain’s The Buoy won Best Sound Design, considered the third most important award by festival organizers, in memory of Andrei Toncu, a young sound designer who died in 2006. In its 11 minutes, Mariano Salvador's very wet short shows a man who decides to swim to a buoy, drifting dangerously away from shore.

The Best Romanian Short Award went to Music in the Blood, Alexandru Mavrodineanu's movie about a man (Andi Vasluianu) who is convinced his musician son Lele is very gifted, but Lele will soon find out that the gypsy music industry is highly competitive.

The jury awarded a Special Mention to The Other World. The French short directed by Romain Delange shows the very different worlds of two childhood friends: one wants to make movies, the other goes to war in a UN unit. Life will make their worlds collide dramatically.

The Audience Award went to Canada's The Armoire by Jamie Travis, a former NexT Trophy winner. His 20-minute short tells the story of Aaron, an 11-year-old who plays a very special game of hide-and-seek, involving an armoire, with his best friend Tony.

NexT was founded in 2007 in the memory of Toncu and director Cristian Nemescu (whose sole feature, California Dreamin' [+see also:
trailer
film profile], won Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2007), who died together in a car accident in 2006.